Unconventional Wisdom

Originally posted at It’s My Mind on April 1, 2010!

An article that I Googled (or is it Topeka’d). It isn’t just AT&T there are other companies that may have to cough up some money to afford this brand new entitlement foisted onto the American people recently.

The news: several companies, including 3M, John Deere, and Caterpillar, have already announced that due to the health-care plan recently (and with incredible tumult) signed into law, they’ll see raised expenses this year, which could be tough in this economic environment. But all of those companies’ added expenses combined don’t add up to half of AT&T’s proposed problem, announced on Friday and reported by The New York Times: the telecommunications giant says they’ll see a whopping $1 billion “noncash accounting charge” this year. In other words, AT&T will have $1 billion less in 2010 than in 2009, explicitly because of this bill–and such a big change in the books may mean AT&T will pass on the loss to its employees, possibly resulting in a loss of health-care benefits for retirees.

Specifically, the cuts in benefits will come in retiree drug coverage, which is an all-too-real problem. Retired AT&T workers may suddenly find themselves unable to afford medication, due to the passing of this bill. That sounds very bad for the pro-health-care side, and like a ready-made talking point for those against health-care reform, but it’s not nearly that simple. The question is: Why did a dollars disappeared from AT&T’s coffers?

The 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, still in effect, gives a tax deduction to companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees. In fact, these companies, including AT&T, can deduct 100%–every single penny–of the money they spend on prescription drug benefits from their taxable income. Thus, AT&T gets to keep a whole chunk of money from being taxed, which basically means they get to pocket more of it. The government even goes one step further and subsidizes (read: pays for) a whopping 28% of those prescription drug benefits in the first place, to make prescription drug benefits as affordable as possible for the companies. The companies get both a 28% discount and a nice tax break, all to encourage them to provide prescription drug coverage.

But there’s a loophole in the law big enough to drive a Chevy Suburban through. These companies get to write off the entirety of their prescription medication plan, even though they’re actually only paying for 72% of it. The new health-care bill simply closes that loophole, and says that companies can still deduct every penny they pay on prescription drug benefits from their taxes–but only the money they’ve paid, not the 28% that the government hands them. That’s where the billion dollars comes from: AT&T is no longer allowed to deduct things they didn’t pay for in the first place.

I heard about this on the Rush Limbaugh program. This was the first time I listened to his program in some months!

It was also mentioned that US Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA and chair of the US House of Representative’s committee on energy and commerce) sent a letter to those various companies who have posted losses due to this new health care entitlement:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, fired off a letter to top executives at John Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T, calling them to testify about the announced earnings losses caused by a new tax on retiree drug benefits.

“The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern. They also appear to conflict with independent analyses,” said the letter to AT&T President Randall Stephenson, who announced the company would charge off $1 billion in earnings.

The three other CEOs got letters signed by Waxman and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the oversight and investigation subcommittee that will grill the executives April 21.

On a lot of fronts, this fight over a bill that was signed into law a week ago is about to get ugly.

13 states so far has filed lawsuits against the federal government with regards to this law:

The legislative battle over health care reform is over. Through procedural tricks, the Obama administration succeeded in passing historically intrusive legislation.

Recognizing that Congress failed to protect individual freedoms, Americans must now turn to the states and the courts to defend our constitutional liberties.

Appropriately, 13 states filed suit against the federal government last Tuesday asserting that, “the Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage.”

Over the past week, other states continued to join the fray, either by filing independent suits or by joining the original lawsuit. As a Pennsylvanian, I am proud that Pennsylvania state Attorney General Tom Corbett was one of the original 13 plaintiffs. A candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, Corbett said he is pursuing the suit as “a 10th Amendment issue” and that he would be doing so whether he were running for governor or not.

Well, let’s see what happens, shall we?

a fight at a Chicago public aid office. The fight itself was pretty bad, but what happens next will leave you like WTF???

Via Chicago News Bench!

ALSO check out this post on the video at WatchYourStep!

Originally posted on March 31, 2010 at It’s My Mind!

Do you remember over a decade or so an uproar over an obscure word? The very obscure word you’re seeing in the post title? It looks like for a limited time only it’s back!

A sign outside a northern California business that accuses President Obama of being “niggardly” is causing controversy among locals, KTXL-TV reported Wednesday.

The sign, located along a freeway in Acampo, Calif. says “Obama = niggardly” and that he “hurts small biz.” Another part of the sign reads “Buck Ofama.”

One motorist told KTXL that the sign was associated with the Sunny Rose Cafe in Acampo. A telephone listing for the business on Google was disconnected, according to KTXL.

The word “niggardly,” despite sounding like a racial epithet, actually means ” grudgingly mean about spending or granting” according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary and is believed to have its origin prior to that of the racial slur.

The word “niggardly” gained national attention in the U.S. back in 1999 when David Howard, an assistant to then-Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams, resigned after using the word in a speech to describe the city’s budget.

That last paragraph! That was the incident I was thinking about. Kneejerk reaction to a term that really doesn’t have a racial connotation other than a similar prefix to the proverbial N-word. Some people ought to put their outrage to rest for a second.

Originally posted at It’s My Mind on March 4, 2010!

This time what we might see is bringing up an old case just to overturn Obamacare. In this case it involves a high school student bringing a gun to school.

A Texas high school student’s decision to bring a .38-caliber handgun to school in 1992 could end up at the center of the legal fight over President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan.

Alfonso Lopez Jr.’s arrest at Edison High School in San Antonio set in motion a legal battle that may prove crucial to 13 state attorneys general fighting the new law.

Lopez, a senior when he was arrested for handgun possession in March 1992, ended up facing federal charges of violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. But the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, threw out his conviction five years later on the grounds that Congress exceeded its regulatory authority under the Constitution when it approved the 1990 law, which makes it a violation of federal law to possess a firearm in a school zone.

In filing a lawsuit last week challenging the new health care law’s mandate that everyone must have health insurance, the 13 state attorneys general — including Greg Abbott of Texas — cited the same legal reasoning that went into the Lopez ruling.

At issue in both cases is the Constitution’s commerce clause, which limits the regulatory powers of Congress to matters involving interstate commerce. In the Lopez decision, conservatives on the court led by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist ruled that the 1990 gun law was unconstitutional because it had nothing to do with commerce between states.

Upholding the federal government’s right to control guns in school zones would give Congress “a general police power of the sort retained by the states,” Rehnquist wrote for the majority.

Close to 20 years later the states are making the same argument regarding Obamacare. Here’s more!

Prior to the Lopez ruling, the Supreme Court had for 60 years mostly followed the lead of Congress, ruling that congressional claims of regulatory power were valid under the Constitution. With the Lopez ruling, court watchers predicted a wholesale scaling back of such claims, clipping the wings of Congress to legislate in any area it wanted.
…
The lawsuit “is definitely not frivolous,” said professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University in an interview with the National Law Journal. “Anyone who says it is — and I know a lot of law professors have — they’re whistling past the graveyard,” Barnett said. “Anything that has never been done before has no precedent for it. And this (health care reform law) has never been done before.”

Since the Texas case was decided, Rehnquist has died and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a swing vote who sided with the majorities in the 1995 and 2000 rulings, has retired. In their places are two solid conservative votes, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Last year, moderate-liberal Justice David Souter resigned and was replaced by a like-minded jurist, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Well I could exceprt more, but I think you should read the whole thing. It may well be worth your times if you’re following the battle over Obamacare. Besides it’s not quite over yet! The bill was signed into law, but will it or will it not stand. We will see eventually.

Via Newsalert!

BTW, you might find this post over at The Provocateur interesting with regards to Illinois Democratic Congressman Phil Hare. He was recorded as commenting that the US Constitution doesn’t matter in this health care debate. Then as it reached a firestorm he had another video to address those comments saying that they were taken out of context.

Alfonzo Rachel reads us some of his hate mail. People really don’t like the idea of a Black Conservative now do they? Don’t get it!

Also posted at PJTV via Instapundit!

I plan to start posting here against though not as frequently as in the past. This time around I want to cross-post those posts I have written at my main blog, It’s My Mind. However, I want to post only on stories of national interest. That’s my goal as of now.

Perhaps even offer old postings that are relevant here. Of course I do want to do some original posts here, but for now the plan is to find some nationally oriented posts and post that here. In addition to anything over at It’s My Mind.

That is all!

BTW, about an hour after I publish @ It’s My Mind, the same post will be seen here. It’s of a video of Alfonso Rachel reading some of his hate mail. Wait for it around 12 Noon or so here.